Medium server farm configurations that are supported in SharePoint Portal Server 2003

This article discusses the two medium server farm configurations that are supported in Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003.

A server farm is a centralized grouping of network servers that provide a network that has load balancing, scalability, and fault tolerance. In a server farm deployment, you configure individual servers so that they appear to represent a single resource.

The following types of server farm deployments are available in SharePoint Portal Server 2003:

• Small server farm
• Medium server farm
• Large server farm

Two medium server farm configurations are supported in SharePoint Portal Server 2003.

Medium server farm configuration

The configuration for servers in a medium server farm deployment of SharePoint Portal Server 2003 is listed as follows:

• One or two front-end Web servers that have the search component enabled
• One index management and job server
• One or more computers that are running Microsoft SQL Server 2000
• Optionally, one computer that is running the components for backward-compatibility with Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2001 document libraries

Medium server farm configuration in a clustered environment

A new medium server farm deployment is supported in SharePoint Portal Server 2003. In this configuration, Microsoft SQL Server is configured on the active node and on the passive node of an active/passive failover cluster. The configuration for servers in this medium server farm configuration is listed as follows:

• Two front-end Web servers that have the search component enabled and that are running SQL Server 2000. The computers that are running SQL Server 2000 must be configured in an active/passive cluster.
• One index management and job server
• Optionally, one computer that is running the components for backward compatibility with Microsoft SharePoint Portal Server 2001 document libraries

For more information about server farm deployments of SharePoint Portal Server 2003, see the "Deployment Scenarios" section of the Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Administrator's Guide. The Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 Administrator's Guide (Administrator's Help.chm) is located in the Docs folder in the root folder of the SharePoint Portal Server 2003 CD.